The Time Travel Megapack: 26 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories by Edward M. Lerner

The Time Travel Megapack: 26 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories Reviews

• 
  Marianne

  26 short stories about time travel. I generally love time travel stories, but apart from a couple of little gems here and there the rest were really just hard work getting through. Some were just plain silly. Luckily they were all pretty short so whatever annoyance I felt, it was at least short lived. A few of the stories may well have gotten 3 or 4 stars on their own but mixed up with the rest, this book evens out at a 2 or 2.5 I guess. If you really like time travel stories and don't mind reading a few odd ones in between the real deal, I guess the good stories almost makes it worth it. Almost.
• 
  Joshua

  The vast majority of these stories are awful... not even worth the review. A few of the stories are ok, but nothing spectacular
• 
  Bob Lee

  If you're a sci-fi time travel fan, this book has 26 stories, some old, some new. For 99 cents, it will provide hours of entertainment. Some of the stories are entertaining and pretty good, but some I didn't like at all. The advantage of reading short stories is that you can put those behind you and move on to others.
  
  I can't go through all 26 stories, but here are the first 4 to give you an idea:
  
  1) TIME OUT, by Edward M. Lerner - you are an assistant to a mad scientist creating a time machine, and he starts out making small ones the size of a microwave at first. What do you do when a note appears from the future that says, "Don't do it!" Very entertaining.
  
  2) THESE STONES WILL REMEMBER, by Reginald Bretnor - an interesting ghost story-like approach. Once more you are an assistant, using a time viewer like device to spy 400 years in the past to discover where the Russian Baron hid his treasure trove so that it can be rediscovered by the current owner of the castle - mildly entertaining.
  
  3) PROJECT MASTODON, by John Gregory Betancourt -an 'embassador' from a non-existent country called Mastodonia appears and wants to establish relations in exchange for providing sanctuary for your people in his country - eh, it was OK. It was pretty obvious after a few paragraphs.
  
  4) 12:01 P.M., by Richard A. Lupoff - Bill Murray in "Ground Hog Day" did it much much better. Enough said.
• 
  Jonathan

  3/5 Time Out:
  This is a thriller that is at first refreshing, suspenseful, and even relevant to current affairs, but near the ending, the plot loses its intrigue and becomes purely action-driven, with time travel theories being muddled up by the layman narrator, who can barely keep his train of thought straight. The story ends up never answering the questions it poses, especially which time travel theory is the right one in its universe, instead resorting to "everything was a disaster and it all went up in flames".
  
  2/5 These Stones Will Remember: This is really more of "a story which happens to have time travel" than "an actual time travel story". Meh.
  
  3/5 Project Mastodon: This... is a time travel story alright. It starts out like a brilliant Lafferty, but then takes itself too seriously, and ends tamely and disappointingly. (So maybe still like a Lafferty?)
  
  At this point, I checked the reviews and realised that this anthology isn't worth my time.
• 
  Travis

  This is the first megapack collection that I've read (as far as I can remember anyway), and I found the collection to be an interesting mix. I liked the stories for the most part (really, only one I really didn't care for), so I think I'll probably checkout other packs, to see what they offer as well.
• 
  Mike Collins

  A couple of decent stories, but a fair deal of dross, long-winded tales and two or three that don’t even involve time travel. Plus, the cover on GoodReads says 25 stories, whereas there are 26, as per the cover on Amazon. Odd…
• 
  Jirnsum

  Some good and some that didn't age too well
• 
  Patrick Gibson

  An excellent collection. Only a couple duds (pretty good as far as these collections go)!
• 
  Charl

  Some I'd already read, but worth re-reading. Some I hadn't, and I enjoyed all but a couple of those. A nice selection of the genre.
• 
  Steven

  There were a few gems, but mostly meh. Nothing downright bad, unless it was a one-page bad pun story
• 
  France-Andrée

  Difficult to judge because the stories are not the same calibre, I don't think there's any one star and there's maybe one or two 5 stars. The majority of stories were interesting some where more "sciency" than others, others were pure time travelling without explanation for how the travelling happens. I think all and all an interesting read for when a short is called for; I didn't read it all in one go, but sometimes with an anthology it is the best thing to do so not to confuse the different authors and their works.
  
  When possible I have given an individual rating for the different stories (not sure I wrote a lot of reviews along the way).
• 
  Duncan

  An excellent collection of short stories all based around Time Travel. Some are truly excellent and thought-provoking. Some of them consider the possible effects of time travel in ways I'd never even considered before. The only let-down is the inclusion of a few "Feghoots" which pad out the book- a classic form, they're short shaggy dog stories that exist only to set up a terrible pun, and not truly Time Travel stories.
• 
  Jim Kratzok

  This volume held an interesting selection of stories, a number of which were from the "Golden Age" of science fiction in the mid part of the 20th century. Some of these stories were rather dated but still readable. A few, I struggled with. Considering that I've been reading this stuff for almost 50 years there were remarkably few stories I've read before. All in all, the book was worth reading.
  
  
• 
  Bob

  For $0.99, it's a bargain. However, there are probably 4-5 great stories in here, 15 or so that are poor, rambling, or mediocre at best, and probably 5 that are very short setups for puns. The first pun story made me laugh, but it got old really quick.
  
  Still, for the price, it's really worth a read, and most of the good ones are near the start.
• 
  William Knight

  This book suffered a bit from typos due to a lack of editing. Most of the stories were good, with the exception of one that sprinkled in science concepts that were unexplained and mostly nonsense. Being an Asimov and Heinlein fan, I'm spoiled by well-researched science in my scifi books.
  
  Worth the price but only because it was cheap.
• 
  John Welch

  Bit of a strange one this. Like most anthologies it is a mix of good and not-so-good. The difference here is that it includes classic (ie old) stories as well. Some of these seem so old that the science is virtually Victorian and poorly described. Having enjoyed the vast changes in SF over the last 50 years, it was not very pleasureable to read these poor offerings.
• 
  Suzan

  It took me forever to finish this. Many of the older stories frankly put me to sleep. There is one long novella from 1928 that must be of interest only to historians of the genre. But towards the end there were some interesting ideas. I just decided, since I'm on a time travel book, to get this onto my READ list.
• 
  Tony Ryan

  Some really good and fiendishly clever Time Travel short stories. A couple of duds, but it's only 34p on Kindle, so if you have just a passing interest in the genre, I recommend it highly.
• 
  Martin Skate

  Simply fantastic. Some of the stories were amazing. Loved it, just loved it. More please!
• 
  Vikas Datta

  Brilliant collection of stories about this paradoxical state of being...
• 
  Ruven Naidoo

  Read three books, by this author that could not be found.
  1. Grandpa?
  2. Settlement
  3. A matter of perspective
  
• 
  Jonathan

  The collection here isn't that great. The stories all seem like they are only part of a larger story with nothing really coming to a satisfying conclusion.
• 
  Geoff Lynas

  Some stories a bit dated. A few unusual takes on time travel. Plenty of variety. Solid read.